filmmaking nerdom in a technical art form

“Evicted!” -a fashion film

Short setup on sticks.

This personal project actually came about after shooting my previous fashion film, “culture.street.runway” in Feb 2013. I met Christina McCasty (AKA Tina) through her then roommate and model, Sabrina Lorena, who brought her in as a last minute replacement and she saved our butts by adding to the feature model segments in a major way.

Since then, we’ve been talking about creating another piece together, I wanted to experiment in another personal fashion project and Tina was in need of a video portfolio. So we all helped one another out in a great way with “Evicted!”.

Directing w/ star, Christina McCasty

We’ve been working w/ Magic Lantern RAW (MLRAW) for quite a bit now and I’ve gotten some awesome results. I chose to stick to the 50D rather than the equally awesome 5DMKIII version primarily due to the sensor size, with the 50D’s being a 1.6 crop, super-35 film size like the 7D, 60D and others. That said, I recorded in the maximum resolution allowable at a 16:9 aspect ratio for a 2.35:1 crop in post and used VisionColor as my on-set LUT.

Thanks to the mini HDMI out on the 50D, I was able to whip out my trusty DP4, which is my go to piece of gear for just about everything. Especially with both rig setups, which consisted of a modified action cam and my shoulder cam (using the full DP4 EVF Loupe). Considering how much literal running around was needed, there was no way I could’ve done this properly without my DP4 on the rigs. Now I don’t even bother rearranging parts any longer, they’re simply the standard rigs designated for whatever jobs may come.

DP4 w/ sunhood attached

Low running shot using the DP4 to support.

The developers over at Magic Lantern have been working some miracles in a major way. What was once considered early experimental Alpha code has now turned into a full-fledged option rivaling the likes of the BlackMagic, Ikonoskop and other mid-range cinema cameras. So it’s become a totally different conversation when speaking of “DSLR video” compared to only several years ago.

Our post production workflow is the same across the board for DNG processing; an older school, telecine style. We unpack the frames using RAW2CDNG, open them in Davinci Resolve, with a VisionLog LUT and BMC Film process and export in DNxHD 10bit 422 or 444 (for movie screen work). After editing has been wrapped, we then export the timeline into a DPX sequence and do the final color grade in either Davinci or After Effects CS6. If the resolution of the DNGs are larger than 1080p however, then we stick to a 422 video round-trip back to the RAW files for color after the edit’s been locked.

Post color work, shot in Brooklyn.

I definitely have a lot more to learn about the fashion world, coming from a narrative and action sports film background. However, the journey has been great so far and I couldn’t have done it without my crazy team, beautiful talent like Christina McCasty, and the awesome minds over at Magic Lantern and Small HD.